PhD project: Editors and Literary Production: Editorial Relationships and Collaborations in Twentieth-Century British Publishing
Funding: AHRC SWWDTP
Supervisors: Dr Kate Wallis (University of Exeter), Professor Nicola Wilson (University of Reading)
Elisabetta Tommarelli is a fully-funded AHRC doctoral researcher at the University of Exeter and Reading in the UK. Her main research interests lie in publishing history and studies, English literature, book history, editorial theory, and authorship studies.
Elisabetta’s PhD project investigates the role of the editor as a creative and intellectual collaborator in twentieth-century British literary production. Drawing on archival research, her work examines editorial relationships and the material conditions through which literary texts came into being, challenging the cultural narrative that centres the author as sole creative agent. Her research focuses on women editors working in mid-to-late twentieth-century British publishing, whose editorial work shaped major literary careers but has received little sustained critical attention. Her methodology is strongly archival, working with publishing and literary archives at the University of Exeter and the University of Reading Special Collections, among others.
Prior to undertaking her PhD programme, Elisabetta completed her undergraduate degree in Modern Languages and Cultures, her MA degree in Foreign Literatures and Literary Translation, both at University of Macerata, Italy, and a second MA with major in English literature at Lund University, Sweden.
Email: et659@exeter.ac.uk